Tapestry of Fire
by Persephone Kore
Summary: After a long dispersion among the stars, Kevin MacTaggart Proteus turns his attention back to Earth and decides to give his mother an... unusual... birthday present.


_Disclaimer: All characters mentioned are Marvel's. So are locations and past events to which said characters refer. This particular plot is mine. The story is for amusement only; there is no financial gain to me and no infringement on Marvel's territory intended._

**Tapestry of Fire  
by Persephone**

I dance with starfire. Swirling, caressing flares and watching fusion in the heart of a newborn star. 

Beautiful. Patterns. All the patterns. So beautiful. Dips and curves and angles and circles and curlicues and... and... shapes in more dimensions than there are words for without equations. Energy tracings. Weavings on a loom far larger than this universe. Webs and light and dark and....

I could change them if I wanted. I could do anything, change an event, change an orbit, change the rules themselves. But I don't usually. I changed the trajectory of a star once, on a whim. 

Luckily, it didn't have planets. That wasn't a very good idea. I was careless; I twisted the pattern too much and didn't think of all the consequences.

Even a little change can do that. I've seen. Sometimes the smaller changes make far more difference than the large ones. But my perspective is different, now. 

I am fire. That's why I'm out here.

I was human once. Not now. Too much fire for that frame. I couldn't live that way. I burned too many people. It still hurt to leave....

But now, now I'm free... no pain or fear or destroying... only the joy of dancing with a universe that's as much fire as I am....

It's lonely though.

I just realized that again. I'd been forgetting. 

I turn back to look homeward... back to Earth, back to the little island that was my womb after the womb for all those years... back to her.

She didn't mean to be cruel. I thought she did, sometimes. I would have died far sooner if she'd done much differently, though... and she knew it. She was afraid, and driven by it.... Oh, I understand that now, but I still wish for more of the times when she would read to me or just talk, or hold me before-- before it got bad enough that would have hurt her. I didn't want to hurt her. But she could have come out of the lab to me a little more often. It's not as if she found anything much anyway.

That wasn't fair, was it? She did the best she could. I always knew that, really.... I knew she loved me.

I wonder if she's forgotten me?

I drift toward her... the patterns are more complicated around live things, especially sentient ones, why did I never notice before? I haven't been paying enough attention. Last time I was there it was a little hectic, of course.... Layers on layers... very pretty... like a tapestry of braids....

No.

No....

Something's wrong.

There's a peculiar warp, one I haven't noticed before. In her pattern, and the same one repeated over and over in time and space... especially high levels around Genosha... like someone twisted the pattern until it snapped.

I riffle delicately through the tiny chemical dances of her thoughts. She'll know. Of course she'll know what's wrong.

Epidemic.

Sort of.

No pattern? If I had eyebrows I'd knit them. There is a pattern. I can see it.

Of course, I have a slightly odd perspective.

It's killing her.

She's stopped working to cry, in the lab alone where she thinks no one can see her... 

Flip back, a little bit... don't want to disrupt anything too badly... there.

Someone specific did this to her, hurt her and made her hurt for everyone else... 

She knows who it is; I'll find out....

He made her cry. Maybe I'll kill him. Slowly. Or quickly but very painfully; one last host perhaps....

Him?!

It can't be... that face.... He was the one who argued for me to live last time! I thought he was her friend from years ago, I....

Oh. Not him. Only someone who looks similar. Good, I can still kill him once I fix his ill-weaving....

Blast, he's already dead? No... no, there he is. I guess he came back. Seems to happen a lot....

That gives me an even better idea. I'll deal with him later. 

I swoop in closer, focus all this energy I seem to have to spare now that I'm 'dead' myself, and slide back in time.

Of course I can do that. I can do anything. 

I dance between molecules, between instants, from point to point where that uniquely distasteful warp in the pattern claimed lives. All of them. And I reach out and invite their minds and souls to join me.

And then I carry them all back to where and when I left, and begin a slower dance as I recreate each and every one of them near the places they died. I checked the right physical structures, of course -- I did pick up _some_ things from my mother, after all.

I'll never be much of a scientist, though. I love watching, but it's too tempting to join the dance and shift the laws of nature just a little bit...

Paradox? Of course not. Schrodinger's Cat, or a variation of the principle. I brought them all back to the time I left so that any observable consequences would be delayed until after all the times they hadn't been observed yet. So there's no way to say I changed anything, because nobody could have told until now whether I'd done it or not, and now I have. I'm good.

I'm also a little too smug at the moment. I'm not _finished_, after all.

I have to be sure the changes last when I turn my attention away, for one thing. I can rearrange matter and energy fairly easily, but for some reason the alterations tend to unravel when I stop looking -- unless I take steps to prevent that.

There, and there, and there, and... 

And the Genoshans are sorrowful because they don't have names. They should have names. They have numbers, but they don't like that....

Why not? I like numbers... they seem individual enough to me....

Not to them, though. They think of being identified with numbers as cold, impersonal, dehumanizing. They want real names, ones that are used for other people whom everyone recognizes as real. 

I don't know what names they would like, but I touch their minds and to some I suggest ones that seem appropriate, and to all I give a whispered glimpse of how _I_ perceive their numbers....

Good. They're all alive, and home, and well. Or... as close to home as I could find for them.... Genosha will be in uproar soon, I fear.

And now I turn to those who still live, and smooth away the twisted pinch from the fabric of their lives, and restore the weave that ought to be there.

And now back to the island.

I no longer have a heart, but the energy my soul occupies pulses instead with a higher frequency. I think I'm fluttering.

I have to be steady, for this.

I can do it, of course. It's only a matter of having found the right way to go about it. But it will take some care, of course.

She is the last of all to be cured; she would have wanted it that way. She might be a little shocked, though, if I told her I saved her until last so that I could practice first and be certain of the healing.

The warp in her pattern has been working slowly, so slowly, but paining her more and more each day lately. Not that she'd admit it, or even stop to rest. And the tension and exhaustion only destroy her the more, even as she seems almost to hold off the creeping effects by main force of will. 

She can't truly, of course, or not enough. As hard as she works herself, it's as if she twists and strains her own threads to fight, but ends in exacerbating the harsh twist another hand already gave. And she is so weary, but will not pause long and is too proud to turn even to her closest friends for solace....

First, I take away the warp, easing the strained threads and stroking her pattern back into place so delicately she never feels the sudden snap into position the others did. I release the twists and almost-tangles with a light touch, and slowly; there's no need for any further shocks to her body. And then, after the warp is gone and the pattern of energy and matter around her no longer held tightly out of true with the weave, I set about repairing the damage it left behind as I did for the rest, the frayed strands of DNA, the poisoned cells. And of course I gently ease away the pain as I go, soothing ravaged nerves. 

Then I realize that while her pattern is clean and smooth and well aligned again, it is still duller than it should be. She is woven of strong stuff, and her mind still shines bright, but not as it ought. She should scintillate, as I remember when I was very young, not struggle for each spark. 

So I pour energy through her and into her, only a trickle, very softly so as to refresh her, to warm her but not burn. I wash away the toxins of fatigue, disperse them from existence and replenish resources in their place, and I give her back the sense of health as well as the truth of it. 

She feels better now; if I could smile I would. She doesn't know why just yet, of course, but she'll find out soon. Even if the rest doesn't work, this should make a good birthday present.

It is her birthday today, after all. And I doubt she reminded anyone. But of course I remember. 

And then I leave her one more time, for a last obligation, and step into the dance between times again, and very delicately offer life again to all the people I destroyed. They have a choice, of course, and some won't trust me, but it is the least I can do to offer them all the chance. I drove them out and stole their lives to preserve my own; I owe them far more than this can repay, and so I ask each to let me make what reparation there may be.

All but one. He deserved it.

It's easier, at least if they accept, than with the others. These are ones whose forms I know rather better, much to my own shame. And they all have their own names already. 

I hope they don't have too much trouble convincing their families of who they are. I may have to go visiting again later. 

And now, back once more to the lab.

Well, where is she?

I seek her pattern again; that's what I should have done in... the... first... place....

She's standing in... in my old room. It looks so stark. It wasn't always, not really.

She's switched on those energy fields. The flicker of firing neurons... she's feeling nostalgic.

She's thinking about me.

She can't know how much easier she just made this, by turning on the invisible fire that now sheets over the walls. 

She can't know how much harder it suddenly is. She mourns, but does she really want me back? 

I can do this. I can do anything. Well, I can't take a deep breath -- yet -- so I only steady my energy-pattern and begin to rebuild myself, reminding myself of my own form using her DNA and the sheeting taste of the fire she designed to feed me. Not the same way, not the uncontrolled burning and mad energy-drain that I was before....

If I can do anything, why not alter my powers themselves? I couldn't before, being trapped by them, but now... now it will work.... I have to put this body together myself anyway, after all, so why not make it to survive the powers that built it? So I do.

She has moved into the center of the room and her tears fall cold on the floor's dancing energy field. I pull from the shimmering walls, drag myself together, first the familiar energy form -- and then I coalesce into the matter-structure I laced into the space behind her.

Come on, Gilbert. You too. She'll be glad to have you.

And he stands beside me, and I stand in my own flesh for the first time in years, no longer needing to reach for fire, and tremble because whatever I tell him, however much I believe she'll take him in, I can't....

I can't help being afraid she'll turn me away. I can do almost anything else, but right now I don't think I can speak.

One step, another, and my hand hovers over her shoulder, and then drops....

She spins around and freezes, staring, half in joy and half in fright and disbelief.

"Mum -- Mum, I'm home."

The fear vanishes and she moves again, flings herself toward me, past my still-outstretched arm. It folds reflexively about her shoulders as her own lock tightly around my ribs. Out of the corner of my eye I see Gilbert's eyes go wide.

It feels so good to hug my mother again.


End file.
